ABSTRACT
According to statistics compiled by the Commission for Racial Equality (1998), Black pupils are five times more likely to be excluded from school than their White peers. Exclusion in the sense of physical removal from school is, however, only the tip of the iceberg. Some research suggests that prevailing attitudes and behaviour in some schools render Black and Asian children invisible. Based on extensive interviews with teachers, trainee teachers and lecturers in initial teacher education, Russell Jones (1999: 139–42) has devised a typology of disappearance, which describes the various strategies used to avoid ‘race’ and ethnicity in predominantly White schools. These strategies include the following;
failure to see the ‘race’ or ethnicity of a pupil as a significant aspect of their identity;
failure to address ‘race’ and ethnicity because it is someone else’s responsibility or is covered by an official or quasi-official document;
failure to recognise racism as a social problem because the problems faced by Black and Asian pupils are due to them as individuals;
the view that issues to do with ‘race’ and ethnicity are of low priority in a teacher’s work or that there is insufficient time to deal with them as issues;
the view that to address issues of ‘race’, ethnicity and racism creates problems or only makes matters worse.
